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Friday, November 27, 2015

Religious Children More Ungenerous? -- Sightings (Martin Marty)

It is the day after Thanksgiving and all through the land, many a creature is stirring, seeking out the best deals on things needed and unneeded. As I write this, I've yet to venture out into the world of the shopping frenzy. Yesterday was set aside for us to stop and consider for a moment what we're thankful for. So, perhaps it is a good day to finally re-post Martin Marty's comments on a recent study that suggests that religious children are less generous than non-religious children. The point of the study, as detailed below, was to see whether religion is required for morality and altruism. The findings suggest not. While we can critique the study and its basis -- that's something we might do with any survey, including the one that tell us bacon is bad for us, perhaps we might take something different from this. As Marty suggests maybe we can take this as cause to look inside the community to see if there is truth to the charge. With that I invite you to read and consider whether we Christians are truly a generous and gracious people. Truth be told, there is a lot of evidence stacked against us. Maybe this is a wake up call!

Religious Children More Ungenerous?By MARTIN E. MARTY NOV 23, 2015

Photograph: Olga Bogatyrenko / Shutterstock.com

“Crisis-talk,” including talk about religious crises, dominates media and discourse currently. Terrorism. Migration. Economies. Morality. These and others are big-screen topics, but they reflect the small accumulating evidences.

Pandit Nehru observed that “every little thing counts in a crisis.” These November days, suddenly, an apparently “little thing” won big attention, and it promises, or threatens, more. It has to do with a single experiment at The University of Chicago (see “Sources” for details).

The headlines and blog-captions signal a crisis. Samples: “Religious children are meaner than their secular counterparts, study finds.” “Are non-religious children really more altruistic?” “Highly religious people are less motivated by compassion than are non-believers.” “Nonreligious children are more generous.” “Are religious children more selfish?” “Are religious children less generous than atheists?”

A few raised questions or offered critiques: “Skewed study claims atheist children are more altruistic then ‘religious’ children.” “So religion makes you meaner? Not according to the evidence.”

The trigger for headline-writing and mass-effect blogging was an experiment by Jean Decety, a developmental neuroscientist at the University of Chicago, who used the findings of his survey to reach into the “public religion” sphere, which occupies us. Decety gave a cultural conclusion: “Overall, our findings…[support] the idea that the secularization of moral discourse will not reduce human kindness—in fact, it will do just the opposite.”

In Decety’s laboratory, as reported in Current Biology, about 1170 children (aged 5 to 12), in six countries participated. 43% were Muslim, 24% were Christian, 27.6% were non-religious, and five or six other faiths were represented by a few kids.

“They were asked to choose stickers and then told there were not enough to go around for all children in their school, to see if they would share.” Children from Christian homes shared 3.3 stickers, from Muslim homes, 3.2, but those from non-religious homes shared 4.1 stickers on average.

The critics of this “skewed” survey offered plenty of criticisms.

For example, the researchers overlooked the many international studies which have found opposite, or at least qualifying, recent-past findings. “The authors do virtually nothing to test alternative explanations,” wrote one, who was puzzled that the experimenters were not puzzled by the difference between their findings and others.

Most cheered were secularists such as Keith Porteous Wood of the UK National Secular Society: the report was “a welcome antidote to the presumption that religion is a prerequisite of morality.”

The surveyors themselves said that the findings “call into question whether religion is vital for moral development.” Prof. Decety’s comments were consistently along this line. Almost all the champions of the survey and its findings agreed, sometimes almost gleefully.

One positive possible response from the “pro-religious” would be to accept, if guardedly, the announced findings, and use them to offer criticism from within and for the external moral efforts of the religious communities. They will read the survey and the headlines as a judgment on their failures to educate well and to help children develop moral character.

But all that is for another month after November with its reports of “mean” religious children and the morally “non-religious.” Yes, as noted, Nehru was right: “every little thing counts in a crisis,” including the hoarding of stickers by 1170 children in six nations.

To comment: email the Managing Editor, Myriam Renaud, at DivSightings@gmail.com. If you would like your comment to appear with this article on the Marty Center's website, please provide your full name in the body of the email and indicate in the subject line: POST COMMENT TO [title of Sightings piece]. ForSightings' comment policy, visit: http://divinity.uchicago.edu/sightings-policies.

Author, Martin E. Marty, is the Fairfax M. Cone Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of the History of Modern Christianity at the University of Chicago Divinity School. His biography, publications, and contact information can be found at www.memarty.com.

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About Me

I am a Disciples of Christ pastor, theologian, community activist, historian, teacher. I'm a graduate of Fuller Theological Seminary with a M.Div. and a Ph.D. in Historical Theology. I'm the author of a number of books including Marriage in Interesting Times (Energion, 2016) and Freedom in Covenant (Wipf and Stock, 2015).